A Piece of Mind

Chapter [17]

The day after Artemis' successful night trip to Number 12, Grimmald's Place, the dining hall was abuzz with chatter about the daily prophet. Artemis sat as gracefully as possible with those awful, long wooden benches making every meal unnecessarily tricky to get to. He was met with a newspaper shoved forcefully under his nose. Julia seemed to have forgotten their entire argument from the previous night - or was choosing to ignore it. By the stony look on Grace's face, she had not overlooked it in the slightest.

"Look at this article. It's terrible!" Julia gulped down her orange juice angrily as Artemis read an article on Dumbledore's effect on the school's integrity that was written with clear bias (it was a government paper, after all). It included the announcement of a new law giving Umbridge so much power at once that it astounded Artemis that they would be so blatantly obvious.

The only people who might choose to believe this were the targeted demographic of pureblood, rich, and stupid. Though, Artemis supposed, they were the only factor which counted in this social-political equation the Minister had set up. Of course, Dumbledore had his flaws (at the spry age of 150, he had had time to make many mistakes). But from what Artemis had heard, Fudge was far worse. Especially if he was friends with people like Dolores Umbridge.

As he read through the article, Artemis frowned. Absorbing the information quickly and double-checking the mention of goblins on page 17 for anything resembling those he had had the misfortune of meeting in the B'wa Kell Rebellion 2 - no, 5 years ago.

His shoulders relaxed a fraction when they were not the same. Instead, they looked like the creatures who had been running Gringotts bank. There were many similarities though; perhaps they were once a single species and natural evolution under the surface of the earth changed the fairy goblins to look and act completely differently. They both had magic, after all.

Professor Umbridge looked insufferably pleased with herself when Artemis walked into Defense Against the Dark Arts that morning. He made sure to keep a neutral face as he contemplated, once again, the best way to get in trouble. This time, with the new (and rare) obstacle that was Professor Umbridge in high spirits - likely due to the new degree posted that morning.

Dumbledore explicitly told him he would have to wait until the weekend before he could meet the Order, as that was when they were meeting next. Artemis also assumed this was, in part, due to the fact that Dumbledore wanted to be more prepared for him when he introduced himself. Keeping this in mind, he had done some late-night reading two nights ago (after his meeting with the headmaster) on Blood Quills, specifically how teachers were caught using them after they were banned in the mid-1700s.

The answer was vague and mostly consisted of stories where teachers continued to use the quills after they were banned openly, without trying to hide it. This was one of the simpler ways to expose them. Another would be to show the scar it made on one's hand. A more specific answer, which had taken four separate books and an hour's worth of reading, was to use a spell created explicitly for this law which allowed the use of dark magic to be traced on one's hand, even if the scar disappeared. Of course, in time, this spell was used on many dark magic detectors which explains why they don't always work because they were originally used to trace the dark magic that only blood quills leave behind.

He planned to use victims of Umbrdige's detentions, whose scars not only left a physical trace but a magical one, and make his case to a collection of officials in charge of Hogwarts, specifically those who have power over Umbridge's employment. The type of power that would not only get her removed from the school but discredit her and make it extremely difficult to find a job. Then he'd find her vault at Gringotts and... well, you can imagine what Artemis Fowl would do.

He only needed to test it first. And for this experiment, he needed to be his own guinea pig.

After aggravating the class and turning the atmosphere of the classroom into that of a tense but rather furnished prison cell, Umbridge sat down and opened a pink, leather-bound notebook and began to scribble in it.